The Copacabana Pact sounds vaguely enjoyable, but is in reality a major threat to the world’s financial system. President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina and President Luis Ignacio (Lula) da Silva of Brazil agreed earlier this month to coordinate their debt negotiations with the International Monetary Fund. Creditors of the world, beware!

The correct response, when your superior requests you to stop doing something that harms their interests, is “Yes, SIR, Sorry, SIR,” preferably accompanied by a smart salute. Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina seems to have omitted this essential piece of Marine Corps training.

The argument over globalization has a tired quality to it, with primitive protectionists battling against dogmatic free traders, who cite the doctrine of comparative advantage and correctly term their opponents economically illiterate. Yet true economic understanding, not simply of the theory but of the second order effects that trade can produce, may not lie entirely […]

Every month, bullish Wall Street pundits predict that the monthly employment report will show gains of 150,000 jobs or more, the number needed to begin absorbing the 2.2 million jobs lost since President George W. Bush took office. Every month the economy, like Lucy, whips away the football and Wall Street falls flat on its […]

The Martha Stewart trial and the approaching Jeffrey Skilling trial certainly provide soap-opera-style entertainment for the financial pages, but as the storylines get more complex, the doubts should grow: does all this courtroom activity actually benefit the retail investor in stock markets?